


Accept the Fact

by diefleder_tey



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-14
Updated: 2015-12-14
Packaged: 2018-05-06 15:08:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5421629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diefleder_tey/pseuds/diefleder_tey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nightwing and Robin (Dick and Damian) are on stakeout for a training exercise, but the mission doesn't go as planned.  At least, not according to the original plan.  Then again, nothing in life ever does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Accept the Fact

**Author's Note:**

  * For [takadainmate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/takadainmate/gifts).



> I was so happy to get your sign-up for my assignment! This ended up being less h/c than I originally wanted and kind of took on a weird life of its own, with a different definition of "saving" someone I guess. I hope it's to your liking though. Happy Bat-Christmas!  
> (There is one incident of violence that may need a warning, but for the most part the violence is not graphic.)

"You don't have to babysit me, you know."

Dick glanced over his shoulder to see Damian hanging back from the edge of the building, all the confidence of youth rigidly defining his stance - his arms folded across his chest and his eyebrows furrowed together. He had a kid's face and voice and oozed prepubescent immaturity, with the way he insisted that he was actually old enough to do everything. Sometimes, though, he carried those attributes as if his youth were a mere facade - a clever distraction to get others to underestimate him. Like the bright colors of his uniform, as if he had purposely planned his age as an advantage. 

"I'm not babysitting you," Dick responded. Lie. Partially, anyway. While it was shockingly easy to sometimes forget his true age, Damian needed constant supervision for other reasons. In any other family, he would have been perfectly capable of staying home alone, even for several days. But he wasn't in another family - he was in this one. And this particular family had much more to worry about than planning dinners and scheduling bedtimes. This family had a ten year old who thought he could take on the world - a ten year old who didn't know that his youth really _wasn't_ a clever facade, but the truth behind the mask.

Dick motioned for Damian to come closer, to peer over the ledge at the scene below. "What do you see?"

Damian obliged, crouching and quietly moving in. No matter what Dick said, Damian knew what this really was; he knew his father would have left explicit instructions to keep him occupied and monitored. But even still, patrols and training exercises were something to do, regardless of true purpose. "They're idiots."

"What makes you say that?" Dick asked.

Damian pointed to the small cargo delivery truck parked on the street and the three guards around it. "They have lookouts, but none of them are watching the rooftops. They're not even trying to look inconspicuous. And the engine's cold - if they wanted to make a successful getaway, they should have left the engine running."

"Okay, so maybe they're idiots," Dick replied, turning his head to the side quickly to clear his throat. "What do you want to do about it?"

"Does it matter? We're just going to do whatever plan you want anyway."

Dick put his hands up, chest level. "We're training, right? What's the point if you don't learn something?"

Damian paused and looked him over, wary of the offer. "The flower shop is obviously the drop site and they're using the coolers to move everything. We should stop wasting time and take them out." He pointed to the two guards in the back. "They keep staring down the street, they'll be easy to sneak up on. One of us takes them down while the other grabs the driver before he can get in the truck."

"And the fourth guy?"

Damian scowled. "We've been watching them for the past hour, there's no fourth guy."

"They're not watching the rooftops because they've got someone covering them from above already. And they don't need to look inconspicuous or run if they're bait. Keeping the engine off keeps it quiet so no one else on the street hears it, wakes up and comes out to investigate," Dick countered.

"You think it's a trap?" He focused his gaze across the sky to the line of rooftops on the other side. He hadn't seen any movement over there, no glimmers of street lights reflecting off of a gun or glances upward from the guards below to periodically check their safety net.

"No, they're just idiots. My point is," Dick said, quickly clearing his throat again, "what happens if you get down there and find out that there really is a fourth guy? You'll broadcast your presence by taking out those two - if they have someone covering them from the roof that we didn't see, they'd take you out as soon as you hit the street. Actions have consequences; leaping out like that might get you shot."

"I know that," Damian grumbled.

"So, what would you do then?"

"-tt-, find a new partner who wouldn't let me get shot."

"Touché."

"If there was a fourth guy," Damian continued, "we would have seen some sign of him already."

"And if we didn't?"

He was losing his patience. "Then I'd improvise." His shoulders tightened and he balled his fists at his side, tensing up for a fight.

Dick just smiled in response, but with a slight smile, tired. Not the obnoxious stage-show usual one that Damian was so used to.

"What?"

"Nothing," Dick answered. "I agree with you. Sometimes you have to plan to improvise."

"Plan improvisation? That doesn't make any sense," Damian scoffed.

"I know. Just trust me on this one. Do you want the two in the back or the driver?"

The two guards meant more action, but the driver already had one foot in the vehicle. He was going to have to be pulled out before being taken down. "Driver."

Dick smiled again - his normal smile - and lifted his hand, a small bat shaped tracer with a blinking red light between his first two fingers. "Okay, then I'll leave this to you. We know who the buyer is, let's find out the supplier, too. Three birds with one punch, right?"

"Fine," Damian replied, taking it from him. "Let's go." He pulled his grappling hook gun out from his belt and aimed it across the street, readying to swing down.

The delivery truck was the only car on the street, parked outside of a florist shop that had closed several hours before and left every bright overnight security light on. Dick scanned the rooftops one last time and only found stars - at least, what few could be seen in Gotham. It was cold, clear, but his forehead felt slightly clammy and tiny beads of sweat were annoyingly starting to pop up at his hairline. Three thugs, three idiot thugs - it'd be quick and easy and done.

So quick and easy, there was no need to spare time for stealth. Damian swung down and landed on top of the truck with a thud and predatory focus.

One of the guards from the back looked up. "It's the brat!"

The driver jumped into the front seat and turned the key, stomping his foot on the gas and reaching for the gear shift. Damian lunged, switching his body orientation, and grabbed on to the edge of the roof of the cab - pulling down on his fingers as hard as he could to control his motion and swing his legs through the open door and into the driver. He let go, both soles of his boots connecting with the driver's face. Before the driver could react, Damian arched his back and grabbed onto whatever he could find to flip his legs over, heels over head, touching down on the asphalt outside. The second he did, he pushed up and off to spring back into the cab for a second attack.

Dick landed on top of the delivery truck shortly after, the frame dipping slightly from the impact. One of the guards from the back had been rushing to help the driver, but stopped short at his arrival. Dick flipped over his head, landing on the other side; he quickly dropped into a squat, his left leg shot out as he turned to sweep, knocking the guard off of his feet. "What?" he said, getting up and grabbing the thug by the shirt. He shoved him up against the side of the truck. "No, 'And the other guy'?" One punch and it was done.

The second guard seemed to have a bit more sense - at least Dick thought. Instead of lining up for a beat down, he stayed at the back near the doors of the truck, a come and get me kind of scenario. "I thought with me being out of town for so long maybe people forgot who I was," Dick called to him.

"Nobody's forgot about you, Nightwing!"

"Good," Dick said. What was the angle? It wouldn't take more than a second to get to the back of the truck, so if the guard was hiding there hoping he'd be spared, he was dead wrong. And if he was hoping to lure them out to where he could see them in the open street, that wasn't going to help either. "I'd hate to try to jog your memory right before I knock you unconscious after all."

The doors. It wasn't a sniper on the rooftop covering them or the buyer hiding out in the flower shop, but two extra goons stashed in the truck itself, waiting for the right moment to throw open the back doors. "Sloppy," Dick said to himself. It wasn't the kind of thing that normally caught him off guard. Alright, three against one - new plan: improvise.

Damian had scrambled his way into the cab, on top of the driver, who kept one foot on the gas pedal as he leaned back as far across the seat as he could. It wasn't going to do any good to keep him pinned there, but dragging him out was an act of physics: Damian only had so much muscle at his disposal and no leverage with the driver's linebacker weight all firmly planted in the front seat. The right strike would end the conflict. Damian faked a punch with his right fist, causing the driver to put up his arms for a block. With his vision obscured, he couldn't see Damian go for a liver shot with his left. And when he cringed in response to the pain, that's when Damian threw a chisel-fist punch to his throat.

The driver dropped his heavy right arm down to the side, grabbing the gear shift and pulling it back into "Drive" on the way.

Dick had one of the new guards down and another in hand, his arm pinned behind him. He was about to spin and throw him into the third guard when the truck started to roll forward. "Crap."

How many seconds for a small delivery truck to go from 0 to 60 with the gas pedal all the way to the floor? Who cared - he just knew that he had to act fast. He dropped the thug on the ground and jumped into the open trailer. The third guard caught his leg, unwilling to let him go. "Fine," Dick said to him, "then you're coming with me."

The driver gagged and tried to push Damian back, knee him off of his lap. Damian was able to lunge over, attempting to somersault over the guy's head onto the other side of the cab. He hit the door and the driver grabbed the wheel, pulling it hard to the right to keep himself up. The truck veered and Damian slid into the man's side as he frantically tried to spin the steering wheel in the other direction.

In the back of the truck, Dick had used the jolt to swing his leg up, adding to the force with which the guard slammed into the wall. He grabbed the guy by his coat and pulled him into a hold while the truck skidded down the street. The guard was trying his best to work his way out, taking a switchblade from his jacket, his arm swaying with the truck.

"Drop it," Dick commanded. "We both know you aren't paid enough to get hurt, and trust me, it's going to hurt a lot."

"I'm not paid at all to give up," the guy grunted back.

"Fair enough," Dick said, shifting to tighten his hold.

The driver was oversteering, on the verge of losing control of the truck. With a sharp U-turn, he changed directions, back toward the florist's. Damian took advantage of his distraction and the wide open door. He lowered his shoulder and rammed into the driver, using all of his strength to push him into the doorframe while the truck swerved right. It was enough to dislodge him and send him out of his seat. He grabbed onto Damian's cape, pulling it with him - and clung to the steering wheel, keeping him in the cab. The truck veered to the left, tipping on the edge of its tires and toppling onto its side as it plowed into the glass front and counter of the florist's.

In the back, Dick had almost gotten the guard to drop the knife when they both suddenly slid into the front wall of the truck. He had enough time to let go and throw his hands behind his neck, protecting the base of his skull from impact. The guard next to him slammed into one of the containers that had been left behind, going immediately limp. Dick got his bearings quickly and checked the guard before even registering what hurt on himself. Still breathing - not dead, just out. And...smelly? 

A hint of smoke and gasoline hit his nose. There was a good chance the thug had some sort of spinal injury after the crash, but Dick didn't see that he had a choice. If he didn't move the guy, then possible spinal injury would meet with definite third degree burns. He gripped him under the arms and dragged him out of the back of the truck.

The flower shop was a mess. Glass windows and glass vases were shattered all around them, the lights out and the neon sign from the front hanging precariously above the entrance. _Really sloppy_ , Dick thought to himself. More like a training exercise in what not to do. Two goons out, two had run away in the fracas, and the driver….

Dick dropped the guy once he had made it outside of the shop and bolted back in. He had forgotten the driver - which means he had forgotten…. "D- Robin?" he called out, climbing up to the open door of the passenger side of the cab. The driver was slumped against the wheel and the left end of the dashboard, groaning. Underneath his body poked out the edge of a black and yellow cape.

Dick immediately lowered himself into the cab and pulled the driver's shoulder up. "Robin!?"

"-tt-."

Dick looked up to see Damian staring down at him, crouched on top of the door frame - sans cape. "I thought you said you weren't babysitting me. I wouldn't be stupid enough to stay in the cab when he lost control."

"Help me get him out of here."

"Why?"

"Because the truck's probably going to catch fire any minute," Dick said.

"So? What good is he to us now? If we pull him out, the police will have him before he can get back to the supplier."

Dick gave him a pointed look. "You don't let someone burn to death because they're no longer useful."

"You'll probably strain your back trying to lift him out of there."

"That's why I need your help," Dick continued. 

"Jail won't do him any good."

"Burning to a crisp would do him worse."

Damian wrinkled up his nose and jumped, planting his feet against the dashboard as he lowered himself into the cab. "We're going to burn alive too, you know."

"Not if we hurry." Dick braced himself with one foot on the doorframe and the other on the arm of the driver's seat. "I just need to get the end of the grappling hook around him before-"

A sudden loud noise rang out as the alarm in the florist's finally decided to kick in - a sharp, piercing siren accompanied by the hissing of the sprinklers turning on. Water flooded down on Dick's head, quickly drenching his hair and matting down the edges.

"There, now he's not going to burn to death," Damian pointed out.

"No, just drown," Dick muttered. "We're still pulling him out. And quickly, someone will be responding to those alarms."

Within seconds they had a line tied around the driver and pulled him free of the cab. Dick dragged him to where the two remaining goons were, lying in the street and still unconscious. He tied them up while Damian retrieved his cape. Within minutes, Gotham City first responders were on the scene and the two crimefighters were back on the rooftop, surveying the damage.

Damian shook the water off of his cape. Dick shook out his hair.

"You're bleeding," Damian pointed out.

Dick looked down at his left thigh - his costume was torn open and there was a line of red down the muscle. "Must have happened in the crash. It's not bad, just superficial." He smiled and jabbed Damian in the shoulder. "You care."

"Blood's an incriminating thing to leave at a crime scene," he countered. His nose was scrunched up and his arms crossed. 

"Remind me when Bruce, Tim and Alfred get back from their project in Europe," Dick said, looking at the scene down below, "to tell them we've just become silent partners with a florist on 10th." He grimaced; this was supposed to have been quick and easy. His next words caught in the back of his throat, stuck where everything felt dry and swollen. "I think that's enough for tonight."

Back at the manor, Dick quickly stripped off his costume, slopping it over the side of the tub in the guest bathroom. He wanted nothing more than just to keep going, to get on his bike and head back to Blüdhaven and leave Damian to his own devices. The scratch was just that - more visual than damaging. He wiped his leg down with a washcloth, tossed that to the tub too, and contemplated looking for a hair dryer before deciding he didn't really care. Without the mask on, the dark circles around his eyes were more visible. Rushing back to Blüdhaven had nothing to do with getting away from Gotham and everything to do with getting back to his own bed. Then, Dick realized it didn't matter whose it was, he just wanted a bed - period.

Staying suddenly didn't seem so bad. Besides, the whole reason he was there was to keep an eye on Damian. He cleared his throat one more time and flipped off the switch.

***

When Dick opened his eyes, he was staring up at a canopy of trees, tight interwoven branches that blocked out the sun. The birds were singing above and around him and the breeze was slight enough to be felt without making him cold. "Wh-what?"

"We crashed."

He craned his neck to see Damian sitting on a rock near him, watching over him. Something was strange about him, something off. Something off about himself, too. "I feel…." Dick put his hands down against the ground and carefully pushed himself up, quickly learning that his entire body was sore. His leg - his left thigh - was wrapped. Shreds of fabric, yellow and black.

"You hurt it," Damian commented. His voice was entirely too even, too devoid of anger or defiance, confidence or sarcasm. He spoke and the words were just there. Just sounds. "We're stranded."

Dick breathed in, a pain in his side cutting it shorter than he would have liked. Training kicked in. They were in a forest. There was no immediate threat - no enemy, no burning crash, the only injury had been treated already. He closed his eyes and beyond the sounds of the birds singing and the leaves rustling, he could hear water flowing. "There's fresh water nearby, we need to get there."

Damian looked at him, blank eyed. "Actions have consequences."

"Exactly. We need fresh water to avoid those consequences. Come on, help me up."

"Actions have consequences," Damian repeated. "If you strike with your sword, your opponent either dies or parries as a result."

Dick frowned.

***

"Grayson? Grayson?"

Damian huffed out a sigh under his breath. He wasn't sure what he had expected. He was up with the sunrise, dressed and already through his full routine - except breakfast. That was one major disadvantage to Alfred being out of town: breakfast suffered greatly from his absence. It was fine, though. Damian knew where things were in the kitchen and he could figure the rest out. How hard was it to scramble an egg?

More annoyingly, he was the only one awake. He had poured over the evening when he had pulled his sheets up to his chest the night before. There was nothing more to gain from the guards since they'd be questioned and no doubt detained by GCPD - but there was plenty more to find at the scene itself. The containers for the drop off were still there; whoever they belonged to would be sure to see that their merchandise didn't get claimed by the florist as damaged goods. They could go back to the rooftop and wait, or put the tracer on one of the containers, or -

And if he had thought of it, Damian surmised, surely it would have hit his partner in crime-fighting too.

Yet, he was awake and dressed and ready to go, and Dick was nowhere to be found.

"Grayson?" Damian called again, heading up the stairs of the east wing. 

The door to one of the guest rooms was cracked open. Or, Damian caught himself, maybe it wasn't a guest room at all, but Dick's old room, from when he lived at the manor. From when he wore the yellow cape and the "R" on his chest. It was hard to tell. Damian had been in that room several times before, but couldn't tell if what was there were genuine old belongings - left behind over the years - or what his father thought should have been left behind.

He paused at the door, his hand on the knob. Truth be told, he didn't know what kind of things he expected would be in an old bedroom anyway. Trophies? Old posters? Pictures of family members who weren't part of the Wayne family? If Dick Grayson left behind his most valued possession, what would it even be?

Damian furrowed his eyebrows, pushing the train of thought out of his head as he opened the door. What a weird thought to have.

"Grayson?"

Dick was tangled up with the sheets, on his side with the pillows askew - one under his arm and the other in the floor - and a blanket wrapped around his leg. Part of his chest was covered and the rest of him was stretched out across the choppy sea of bedding.

"Wake up," Damian grumbled.

Nothing, no stirring, no sign of response. Damian got closer to the bed. "Wake up." He pushed at Dick's shoulder, forcefully shaking it.

"Wh-what?"

"You overslept. Get up, we need to go to the florist's so we can catch the supplier."

"I feel…," Dick started as he rolled onto his back, rubbing his eyes and his forehead. His breath sounded short, cut off before he finished the full inhale. "Terrible."

"Great." Damian waited by the side of the bed, expecting the conclusion to be, 'Oh well, I'll get over it - let's check out the florist.' After all, the cut was superficial; a little scratch like that shouldn't have sidelined anyone.

"Water," Dick mumbled, then coughed.

Oh. It had nothing to do with the cut at all. "I'm not your nurse," Damian replied. 

"Water," Dick repeated.

"Fine." Damian rushed out of the room and quickly hopped down the stairs. He had to stand on his tip toes to reach the cabinet with the glasses in the kitchen; he grabbed the first one his fingertips touched and took it to the sink, filling it with water. A minor setback. He'd leave the water on the nightstand next to the bed and then go out himself. Of course, he couldn't take any of the cars - that'd be far too conspicuous in the day time. Maybe he could take one of the bikes - he was sure he could handle one - drive to the outer edge of the city, stash it and hitchhike back to 10th St. He could get there on his own. And he certainly didn't need anyone else to watch a building.

Damian ran back upstairs, put the glass down and bolted from the room before Dick had the chance to say another word. He could take care of himself. He was an adult - that's what adults did.

Down the stairs, through the front entrance, into the study on the first floor and to the grandfather clock in the corner, waiting with its trick door and lever. One pull and it revealed the staircase to the cave down below. Damian opened the glass door. He didn't need anyone else to watch the building. And he still had the tracer, he could put that on one of the containers, provided he had the chance to access one and he could slip past police, insurance agents, and hired goons there to recover the material.

His hand stopped short of the pendulum. And if the supplier's guys - let alone the buyer's muscle - were there, then what? What if they were already watching the building, waiting for him to come back? Already inside and standing guard? What if they had a guy waiting up on the roof? 

"I can take them," he said to himself.

Damian's fingers curled around the pendulum. What if there were guys in the back of a truck parked on the street?

He let go.

He had never really been sick before - not that he could remember, anyway. Maybe it had happened when he was a baby. But of the many lessons he learned about survival in the League of Assassins, what to do with a cold wasn't one of them. His mother had made sure he knew how to bandage a wound so he wouldn't bleed out; she had made sure he knew how to look for a shelter so he wouldn't be harmed from exposure should one of their planes be shot down. He could fashion a splint if needed in case of a broken bone.

But when it came to being sick, his only education was, "Push through." He still had combat practice when he had the sniffles. Still had to learn about weapons the time he caught a stomach bug. 

Damian found himself far away from the grandfather clock and back up in the guest bedroom, looking down at Dick and the visible sweat on his forehead. "What do I need to do?"

No answer. Dick was already asleep.

"Fine," Damian muttered to himself. That's what he got for trying. In the League of Assassins, if one of the subordinates had fallen ill, he would have-

Damian cleared his throat, displacing the thought from his mind. Those years were of no help now. It created a vacuum of noise, the room devoid of sound and his mind quieted and silenced from thinking about how the League did anything. With no other thought blaring through his head, he picked up on the slight wheeze in Dick's breathing.

_Get up. Go train. Wipe your snotty nose on the enemy. Go throw up on the katanas before you practice form. Cough on your lessons and do them anyway._

Damian's hands hung by his side. "What do I do?"

***

The more he thought about it, the more peaceful it seemed. Damian was under his left arm, acting as a crutch as they hobbled slowly forward to the sound of the stream. It started out awkwardly, Damian much too short to do any good. But by the time they had gotten to the clearing, it seemed to function smoothly - enough support to ease the walk. And by the time Dick sat down near a rock, a quick rest before they worked on shelter, he found himself wondering if Damian was taller than usual.

"This is definitely wrong," he commented to himself.

The birds sang, the breeze blew. The sun was gently covering the grass on the banks of the stream and touched the landscape with warmth. It was supposed to be relaxing, calm. But something about it made him feel worse.

"Assess the situation," Damian recited. "Assess for possible risks, care for injuries, establish a shelter and a beacon."

No tutting. No demands to be given equal consideration or allowed to do as he pleased. No crossing of arms, grimaces, deep sighing at perceived failings of those around him. Damian was calm. He was quiet. He lacked his passion and youth, his complexity and drama. He was cold and detached and all too familiar.

Dick felt like he was going to throw up.

"We aren't going to build the shelter?" Damian asked.

Dick leaned back against the rock and closed his eyes. "Why bother? This is a fever dream."

***

"I know," Damian said, a slight scowl on his face. "I read that you're supposed to take aspirin for it." He held out the pills in one hand and the glass of water in the other.

Dick was already back asleep.

He set them down on the nightstand next to the bowl of soup. It wasn't hard to research this kind of thing on the internet - there were thousands upon thousands of sites with information on what to do with the sick. Aspirin for fever; soup for cold; juice, tissues, gelatin. Damian wasn't exactly sure what he was trying to fix, but something in the mix would surely work.

Frustrated, he retreated to the chair in the corner by the windowsill. He had brought his mp3 player and sketchbook up for something to do. There weren't many other options. He had tried training on his own and quickly became bored with no one to spar with. He had gone down to the cave for a moment, just to check out the police scanners - but quickly turned them off knowing he wouldn't be able to respond. Outside was repetitive, tv was dull. After breakfast and his attempt to fulfill the soup requirement of the internet's "Steps to fight any illness!" there was no point in hanging out in the kitchen. 

He had tried to indulge in his favorite pastime - sketching - in the study. But he'd put one line down before catching himself wondering if the type of juice really mattered.

Damian pulled his legs up into the chair and set his sketchbook in his lap. The music in his earbuds drowned out the faint wheeze of Dick's breathing. He put the tip of the pencil down on the page and paused, waiting for inspiration to hit.

He had pages and pages filled with all kinds of things - drawings of birds he saw outside the window. A quick drawing of Alfred as he tried to talk his father into some "normal" activity. A sketch of equipment, his shoes, one of the cars. A few were patterned off of enemies, some he had personally met and others he'd only seen in casefiles. Drawing was how he made sense of the world. He had never had the chance to hold a cat before, in his old life; the first day he got to pet a stray, he went home and quickly figured out its proportions and color scheme, tried to replicate its unique eyes and posture. When that didn't work, he looked up muscle and bone structures on the internet. Three weeks later he had drawn a decent cat, and what had been a foreign thing that fussed in his arms was now his own familiar creation. He knew it far better than it would ever know itself.

Damian's eyes fell on the bed and he pulled the pencil across the page in a flat line. The top of the headboard - a reference line. In the League, you weren't sick, you weren't hurt. He turned the volume on his mp3 player a little louder - some classical piano piece that made drawing for him more fluid, more natural. He knew the name of the composition, he knew he did, if he could just think about it a little longer.

The League gave you an option. Accept your fate, or don't. Damian started shading in pools of shadows in the folds of the sheet on the bed. He had trouble with fabric - it didn't follow a skeleton like animals or people. It had its own sort of backbone, and though he tried his best to draw exactly what he saw, he'd sometimes get lost staring too closely. If you got hurt, or you got sick, your fate was to survive. If you accepted it, you lived. And if you didn't….

He turned the music up a little louder. Dick had shifted in his sleep, pulling one of his legs up and changing the shape of the sheets on the bed. Damian frowned at his sketch, contemplating using the eraser before he committed to forging ahead. Life was rarely ever still; it was good to practice memory recall.

"And what do you do when one of your men has been struck down?"

Damian saw only the blue sheets, the brown baseboards, Dick's black hair falling sloppily away from his forehead. He heard his mother well over the piano.

Two members of the League were brought before him, commanded to kneel. He did not know their names, did not recognize their eyes behind their masks - what would soon be their shrouds. He was six.

Dick shifted in his sleep again, half-coughing as he turned.

His mother nodded to the assassin standing behind both men, with his sword held high. He swung and sliced them both across their backs. A painful wound, one that would take time to heal. 

"Stand," his mother commanded. They had great difficulty doing so.

Damian was having trouble with the expression. This wasn't the best of angles. He hesitated before drawing the outline of Dick's chin, unsure if he wanted to finish. Maybe it was enough to just sketch the frame of the bed.

"If one of your men falls in battle, what do you do?" his mother asked.

Six year old Damian looked at the two League assassins, his head cocked to the side. "Leave them."

"You owe it to yourself to stay alive," she continued. "Don't waste your life trying to fight a man who won't accept his own fate." She nodded and the executioner swung again, taking both of their heads.

Damian watched as they rolled toward his feet. Two members, who had trained and devoted their lives to the League - executed for nothing more than to illustrate a point.

Damian ripped the earbuds out of his ears and threw the mp3 player on the floor. The music wasn't helping. His sketch looked rough and raw, nothing like he was accustomed to. He dropped the pad on his chair and walked up to the bed, focusing his eyes on reality.

"I'm," Damian started. He slowly reached his hand over. What was it he had seen online? Or maybe he remembered someone, a caretaker - maybe even his own mother - do once? He reached out to place his hand on Dick's forehead. "I'm sorry I got you sick," he admitted, quietly.

Dick reached up and grabbed him by the wrist before he could make contact. He blinked awake and let go when he realized whose hand he had. "Oh." He sniffled and rubbed his eyes. "You didn't," he said. "I was already coming down with something before we went out."

Damian quickly pulled his hand back and shoved it into the crease of his elbow, crossing his arms against his chest. "Then you're an idiot for making it worse."

"You're right," Dick answered. He pushed himself up in the bed. "Why do I feel like--go get the thermometer."

Damian continued to stare at him and Dick couldn't tell if the lack of response was due to spite or his genuine ignorance of where one would keep such a device. "Nevermind," Dick said, feeling his forehead. He could already tell his temperature wasn't normal. The table next to the bed was covered in cups and bowls. "Did you bring the whole kitchen up here?" he joked, grabbing the first glass of water available.

"Soup is good for illness," Damian muttered. He left his post and headed toward the chair where he had tossed the sketchbook. "You're welcome."

Dick picked up a bowl and stirred it with the spoon before setting it back down. "This is crab bisque…that's not exactly...."

Damian sat and started to shade in the pattern on the sheets with his pencil. "Soup is good for illness. Crab bisque is soup."

Dick couldn't argue with the logic. At least the kid had tried, and, truth be told, he wasn't sure he would find anything different in the kitchen himself. Surely Alfred had an entire pantry of chicken noodle cans stashed somewhere. "What are you doing?"

"Sketching," Damian said, brusquely. 

"You're drawing me a picture?"

"No," Damian answered.

Dick smiled. "You're drawing me a picture to make me feel better? That's cute."

Damian clenched the pencil in his hand and glared across the room. "I'm not! I was just sketching something to waste time since you've ruined our chances for patrol tonight."

"That's much better," Dick whispered to himself, as his shoulders relaxed and he sank back into the bed. "Can I at least see it?" he asked out loud. 

Damian mulled it over and acquiesced; he brought the sketch pad to the bed and handed it over. "I haven't finished yet." 

"Hmm," Dick replied, looking it over. "I look kind of miserable."

Damian didn't respond.

"I feel miserable," he finished.

Damian took the sketchpad back and turned, sitting on the edge of the bed as he looked at Dick. 

Dick quietly laughed. "You know, you don't have to babysit me either."

"Yes I do."

"I'm not that sick." Dick was already yawning, his eyelids heavy and the weight of his head pushing him back down into the pillow and toward sleep. Damian scooted over to the post at the foot of the bed, leaning his back against it and pulling his feet up, his soles on the sheets and his knees up to act as an easel for the sketchpad. He started working on the drawing again.

"Can I have it?" Dick asked, half-asleep. "When...you're done?"

Damian watched. He waited until Dick's breathing changed, the start of the slight noise of exhalation as he fell into deep sleep. Dick said he felt miserable, but at least now he looked less like it - now he looked pretty content. Damian went back to his drawing. "Sure."


End file.
